"Murray Leinster - Four from Planet 05" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

afterward. Then his estimated position matched the site of the static earth-shock-concussion-wave
occurrence. There seemed nothing about this part of the snow-desert which was different from any
other part. No. Over to the left.
He went over to see. He hovered, a thousand feet up. A wind-pattern showed in the snow. But this
was rather far from the probable thing. There were lines-hollows- where gusts had blown at the
snow's surface. They were spiral lines, tending toward a center. They had not the faintest
resemblance to the crater of an explosion which might have made an earth-shock.
Soames stared down. Gail frowned thoughtfully. Captain Moggs announced firmly, "That is a very
singular thing."
Soames did not comment. He was getting a camera out of its place in the 'copter. Gail stared down.


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"I've seen something like that," she said, sounding puzzled. "Not a picture. Certainly not a snow-
field. I think it looks like a diagram of some sort."
"Try a storm-wind diagram," said Soàmes. "The way a cyclone ought to look from directly overhead.
The meteorology boys will break down and cry when they see this picture!"
He took a picture. He took others. The shadows of the wind-made indentations would come out
clearly in the film.
"Unless," said Soames, "unless somebody has a ~snap of a whirlwind touching a snow-field and,
bouncing up again, this will be a photographic first. It's not an ex~ plosion pattern, you'll
notice. Wind and snow weren't thrown away from the center. They were drawn toward
it. Momentarily. It's an explosion inside out. An implosion pattern."
He put away the camera and with some grimness headed for another place some twenty miles away,
where a thing that had appeared from nowhere had dived four or five miles and vanished below the
horizon, with only one sign in its falling-that it had struggled to avoid a crash.
"I don't understand," said Gail a little sheepishly. She looked hopefully at Soames for an
explanation.
"An explosion," said Soames grimly, "is a bursting-out of a suddenly present mass of gas. An
implosion is a bursting-in of a suddenly present vacuum. Set off a firecracker and you have an
explosion. Break an electric bulb and you have an implosion. Th~t pattern behind us is an
implosion pattern."
"But how could such a thing be?"
"If we knew," said Soames, "maybe we'd be running away. Maybe we should."
He was acutely conscious of Gail sitting beside him. He was even impatient with himself for being
so much aware of her when it couldn't amount to anything and he had a first-class scientific
problem on hand.
The 'copter fluttered on. The ice-sheet continued unbroken. Presently Soames said in a flat voice,
"What we're looking for ought to be in sight. It isn't. There's quite a breeze down below. It's
keeping snow stirred up in clouds. Anything solid on the ice-sheet is completely hidden by the
equivalent of a dust-storm, only it's snow."
The 'copter hovered. For a space fully two miles wide, cloudiness obscured the essentially
featureless ice-sheet. It was practically a white-out-microscopic snow-crystals kept in turmoil
like the densest of possible fogs.
"From now on," said Soames, "I shall lie awake nights trying to figure this thing out. And I'll
almost certainly never know."
"There!" cried Gail.
She pointed. Blowing snow hid everything. Then there was a hole in the whiteness, a shadow. The